[Southernap]

I think this topic will also touch on the diversity and inclusion portion of gaming now going on with TTRPGs. I know some articles and fanzines and even some social philosophy (aka social science) stuff that has talked about how TTRPGs have an horrible track record with diversity and inclusion. From the racial aspects in some fantasy games to some of the items referenced above in that BBC article.

I believe that it does come down to knowing the players and the GM. As well as stating up front as a GM, that there is a red line about character actions and players doing things outside of normal behavior. I was just reading an article in a book on how to be a better GM/DM that mentioned you set up those red lines on the opening day of the campaign. Where touching on them or crossing them will lead either to expulsion from the group or serious consequences to the player in character, (since this book was referencing a high fantasy game like DnD or RuneQuest, even having Deus Ex Machima gods kill the PC in the game).

The author also mentioned how sometimes having a soul cleaning adventure after a particular harsh session is useful. Think of going to see some town where you are well known and spending a day recreational recovering from the last major adventure plot point. If not having some sub-quest come up where its getting candy back to a little kid or doing a bunch of courier type missions (taking some love letters between two separated lovers or getting some fuel for a town so you can have some metal to repair the armor on your jeep, etc). That can help to pull the heaviness off the players for a few sessions till the bad thoughts go away.

That said, I have played games where serious consequences have popped up for our players being stupid. I had one where we were stuck between the the NA's in the Allegheny Mountains and the CivGov, during the Allegheny uprising booklet. Hated by both sides. All because one of our PCs decided to put a sniper round into the congressman we were supposed to find to lead us to the cache. Simply because he claimed in character to have hated politicians that started the war. That left us without a CivGov patron, with a bounty on our head with the CivGov and the NAs running around wanting to kill us. Our GM couldn't have us run to the MilGov because we were given a chose at the start of the game to pick a side when creating character pick either MilGov or CivGov. Since we chose CivGov, the GM ran it as if MilGov viewed all CivGov military as traitors and "Un-American" and worthy of court martial and conviction to a prison. It sucked hard and it took us a few sessions of running and being like the best hide and seek players in all time, to get away from the region and start a new campaign further to the west of the region. Also made our GM throw out that book not even a third of the way in and give our problem child of a player a pain of complicated skill checks every single time he wanted to do sometime because of that stupid act.

Thinking about it some more, the T2K game is all manner of grey areas and red lines. I mean think about how the NA is written about in the supplements. They are effectively the American Nutys party and hood wearers for GDW in the game. Those types of folks were also common enemies in most 1970s and on post-apoc fiction books. Yet, they always made my brain hurt in trying to figure a way to have them be in the game and not be over the top stereotypes or worse turn off my friends and get us in trouble with their parents when having the NA pop up as the bad guys.

I still think it comes back to having a GM who knows his players, can establish a firm and hard hand in the game play and have both out of game and in game consequences for outright dickhead and evil playing. As well, I think on the reverse that PCs need to be ready to leave a table if a GM is always pushing the boundaries of good taste and keeping the heavy on the PCs of being in an evil world where evil must be done more times than not just to get by. That is also emotionally taxing. I game to relax with friends and hopefully forget about the real world stresses for a while.